Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Can you discuss immature love to mature love in John Donne's poetry?

I'm not exactly sure what you are asking, but I can
provide at least one example in Donne's poetry that develops the idea of immature love
versus mature love.  In "The Good Morrow," the speaker of the poem describes the two
lovers' lives before they met as childish.  The two lovers before meeting each other
"sucked on country pleasures," and they were not "weaned." Their previous loves with
others were immature, unsophisticated, and fantastical.  It was as if they each had been
sleeping until they met.


Mature love is described in the
third and last stanza of the poem. The two lovers are united body and soul, so much so
that they see the reflection of themselves in each other's eyes.  Here the speaker
describes a love that is perfectly reciprocated and therefore will last until
eternity:



If
our two loves be one, or thou and I


Love so alike that none
can slacken, none can
die.



Unlike the immature or
inferior loves of their pasts, the lovers now share a more perfect love because it is
spiritual as well as physical. In this way, their love is self-sufficient and
undying.

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